Finally. Finally the leader of a major distribution who has the guts to stand up and say what a lot of people have known for a long time, but didn't dare to say because it usually leads to a storm of criticism. Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Ubuntu will be moving away from X.org, opting to go with Wayland instead.

Which you will, of course. It will simply be implemented on top of Wayland rather than infecting it's guts.

I really don't get all the whining people are doing about this. Wayland will work just fine, it's not going to be the end of the world. X isn't nearly as bad as people often make it out to be either, the biggest problem is just the messy API (which is mostly hidden by toolkits anyway) and the slow development because of all the complicated code in it - which Wayland hopefully will improve.

I thought he was a genius. Now *I* hate him with a passion and I hope someone will stop him before it's too late.

Wayland? Yes. I'm all for it IIF I can keep network transparency.

(DES)unity? NO FUCKING WAY!

Chill

Changing to Wayland looks like innovation to me - no doubt it will involve a lot of investment and will maybe answer some of Canonical's detractors, who say it doesn't give anything back. We will see if they can deliver and produce something better.

Copy and paste in Linux isn't great and occasionally catches me out - certainly it needs improving, not a show stopper but - "can do better"

as for Unity as a desktop - I have no doubt that it wont be the same as the current netbook Unity so wait and see (or get involved) again this looks like innovation, which we all want to see.

If Mark kills Ubuntu fear not Mint will move to Debian and all will be well for the noob.

"He makes these grand statements about how Ubuntu is going to do this or do that.

Perhaps you should read the article instead of talk out of your ass. "

I have read the article. And other interviews he has done. And from what I've seen he takes most of the credit given for innovations in Linux and doesn't have very many programmers working on much of anything. He also, from what I can see, plans on leeching as much money from open source as possible, while not really contributing to the ecosystem.

"Problem is that he has very few developers to actually implement what he wants.

How is this a problem? For who? "

Well someone has to do the work. It sure is hell won't be Canonical if the past is any indication.

"What was the last major piece of architecture that Ubuntu debuted ahead of say Fedora or OpenSuse?

Who cares? It's not a fucking contest. "

NO, its a community. And Canonical needs to act like a better community member than they have in the past.

Sigh. Another who believes the only contribution possible is CODE OMG HAXX0RZ. If you don't contribute code, you're a leecher, right? I guess drawing boatloads of users to the Linux world isn't a contribution, right? OH wait - users don't contribute code, they're just leechers!

And from what I've seen he takes most of the credit given for innovations in Linux and doesn't have very many programmers working on much of anything.

He takes the credit? How? Examples?

He also, from what I can see, plans on leeching as much money from open source as possible,

The point is that Canonical does almost no upstream development. They have nearly zero ability to dictate a roadmap, similar to how CentOS is developed. Debian does a better job dictating what goes into Ubuntu than anyone at Canonical does. Shuttleworth saying that Ubuntu is moving to Wayland carries no weight as they have no development ability to back up that claim.

Shuttleworth just saw a nifty presentation at the plumbers conference on Wayland and thinks 'ooh shiny'. When everyone else does the work for it then Ubuntu will start shipping it. They aren't the thought leaders here, only the people trying their best to try and figure out what's going to be the future instead of creating it for themselves. With Canonical being perceived as some sort of thought leader in the community, they look more like the emperor with no clothes.

And Thom, please fix the title. As other posters have pointed out it's not only misleading, but being in the present tense dishonest as well.